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MEIJI NO TAKARA: TREASURES OF IMPERIAL JAPAN: Ceramics Part One: Porcelain (The Nasser D. Khalili Collection of Japanese Art, VOL V)

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The second of two volumes on ceramics, this book covers earthenware and focuses on another great artist-entrepreneur, Yabu Meizan (1853-1934), and illustrates 168 of his earthenwares and those of his contemporaries and imitators, minutely decorated in enamels and gold over a characteristic crackled ground. These wares, under the misleading nane of 'Satsuma', were the most popular of the Japanese craft products which dazzled the Western world in the era of the great exhibitions. An essay by Malcolm Fairley and Oliver Impey demolishes the various myths about the originb of 'Satsuma' put about by Japanese and Western writers in the late nineteenth century, while a biography of Yabu Meizan by Yamazaki Tsuyoshi of Osaka Municipal Museum, illustrated with copious examples of his work from the Yabu family archive and from contemporary illustrations, sheds fascinating light on the evolution of his style and working methods. By assembling such a large and outstanding group of ceramics and presrnting them in the light of pioneering research into their origin and progress, this volume makes a major contribution to the study and appreciation of Meiji art.

The first of two volumes of the catalogue of the Khalili Collection of Japanese Art covering ceramics, this book discusses porcelain. It concentrates on Miyagawa (Mazuku) Kozan (1842-1916), illustrating more than 80 examples of his virtuoso work in porcelain. Kozan brought the medium to new heights of technical perfection not seen before and, ever responsive to market forces, produced wares with shapes and decoration in Japanese, Chinese, and European styles. An essay by Malcolm Fairley and Oliver Impey traces the part played by Japanese porcelain in the international exhibitions of the period, while Clare Pollard contributes an artistic biography based on documentary research in Japan. By assembling such a large group of ceramics and presenting them in the light of pioneering research into their origin and progress, this volume makes a contribution to the study and appreciation of Meiji art. This fifth volume is sold with a free copy of "Volume I: Selected Essays".